Exetel Now Going Unlimited, But Confused About It

A big week for broadband fans – following TPG’s announcement that they’re planning an unlimited ADSL2+ service, Exetel has announced that they’ll also be offering unlimited broadband – but only to “loyal Exetel customers”.

The Exetel plans are invitation only to customers who are off contract and have been with the ISP for over 12 months. They’ll start at $55 a month with a BYO phone line, or incorporate an Optus home phone line for $75 a month – slightly pipping TPG’s bundle.

But the strangest thing about the Exetel announcement is that it came the same day that Exetel CEO John Linton wrote on his personal blog that the move would end up costing companies who offered it (in particular referencing TPG) more than they receive:

$A85.00 is not going to do all that much apart from costing any company (irrespective of how low cost their IP and connectivity bandwidth is) more than they receive for such plans on average and moving any of their own customers currently paying more than that down to that level.

Reading through Linton’s blog, you can’t help but get the feeling he doesn’t like the idea of unlimited internet much. Considering their unlimited plans are going to be invite only, I have this sneaking suspicion they’ll only be offered to “loyal” customers who don’t go crazy on downloads anyway. Still, unlimited is still unlimited, and that’s awesome.

Here’s the announcement from the Exetel forum:

We continue to ‘wrestle’ with the new realities in the ADSL2 marketplace of UNLIMITED downloads/uploads and the prices that this can be offered for.

We think that there will be ongoing ‘convulsions’ in the marketplace and there will be many permutations that will change ADSL2 offerings quite substantially over the coming months.

Having given this situation a great deal of thought over the past few months we are getting close to offering:

1) an unlimited ADSL2 internet plan to current Exetel customers only (and to use so many of our customer’s own words – only to “loyal Exetel customers”) for $A75.00 per month including an Optus telephone line.

2) an unlimited ADSL2 internet plan to current Exetel customers only (and to use so many of our customer’s own words – only to “loyal Exetel customers”) for $A55.00 per month BYO telephone line.

The offer would only be made to out of contract ADSL1 and ADSL 2 customers who have been with Exetel for over 12 months.

Minimum contract length would be 12 months.

The offer would be “By Invitation Only” through the User Facilities.

Any comments would be welcomed.

[Exetel Forum via Whirlpool]
[John Linton’s Blog]